Friday, December 12, 2014

Appeal to Nature

What would you do with access to Artificial Intelligence? How would you change the world? Who would oppose you? ___________________________________

“Welcome
back,” Gene Romano, host of the popular morning television show Good Day; Great
Week, looked directly into the camera with a
toothsome smile. “Today
we’re joined by the new CEO of the world’s first and only creator of Artificial
Intelligence: Electric Sheep Dreams, popularly known as ESD.”

Evelyn Getzu smiled for the camera. Her
charm worked on the interviewer as well as the television audience.

“Evelyn,
thank you for joining us today.”

“Thank
you, Gene.”

“You
inherited the company from your father after he made the huge breakthrough in
AI.”

“That’s
right, Gene, he started everything with his discovery. I’m standing on the
shoulders of a giant.”

“Well
said, Evelyn — may I call you Evelyn?”

“Of
course, Gene,” another winsome smile from a face too young and too innocent for
the perils of the corporate world, let alone an interview with the media.

“Excellent,
Evelyn,” he laughed at the non-joke, “You’re here, not to talk about the past
though.”

“Right,
Gene, my father’s AI accomplishments were fantastic, but we’re all about
progress.”

“And
what does that mean, Evelyn?”

“Well,
Gene, that means, we’re going to keep finding ways to use the power of AI to
make the world a better place.”

“Like
the way that AI has been used in weather prediction, stock trading, encryption,
and entertainment recommendations?”

“Exactly,
Gene, people have had the best, most accurate, most helpful recommendations for
shopping and watching movies that they’ve ever had. The stock market is
entering its twelfth year of steady gains. We’ve avoided billions of dollars in
damage and saved untold lives through more accurate weather prediction. And all
that is just the beginning.”

“Wow!”

“Wow
indeed, Gene, we’ve been busy creating the next revolution in entertainment.
Without the power of AI we wouldn’t have been able to process all the necessary
data. But now we’re able to do something that the world has never seen before.”

“Oh,
you have my attention,” Gene smiled for the camera.

“It’s
called the Lucid Dreaming Network,” she continued, “We can all have lucid
dreams — dreams where we know we’re dreaming and we can take control of things
— but what we didn’t have is a way to connect those dreams…”

“Right,
Gene, until now. See, before, we were trying to replicate the human brain with
simple computers. That task is so immense, so fraught with obstacles, so far
beyond what we’re capable of doing, that it appeared impossible to create a
network of connected minds.”

“Because…”
Gene seemed to like saying nothing, but still getting credit for saying
something.

“Because,
Gene, the brain has eighty-six billion neurons and each of those can make
hundreds or even thousands of connections to other neurons. There are over a
hundred neurotransmitters that regulate brain function. There are dendrite
connections that work as additional sub-processors so the neurons don’t have to
do all the work. What that means, in the simplest terms, is that we don’t have
enough conventional computers on the planet, to simulate even one brain in real
time, let alone create a simulation for multiple brains.”